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Rivalries in Iraq Keep G.I.’s in the Field

American, Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers searched vehicles at a checkpoint for vehicles leaving Mosul, Iraq. Credit
Eros Hoagland for The New York Times

MOSUL, Iraq — A string of checkpoints has appeared on the roads that spoke out from this volatile city, guarded by hundreds of American soldiers working with Arab and Kurdish troops.

The joint operation along one of Iraq’s ethnic trouble spots began with a deliberate lack of fanfare, but it constitutes the most significant military mission by American forces since they largely retreated to bases outside Iraq’s cities in June.

More than two dozen checkpoints now punctuate a snaking line that traces — from Syria to Iran — the unofficial and disputed boundary between Iraq’s federal forces and those of the Kurdish regional government. At times these forces have operated virtually as opposing armies rather than as compatriots, but at the checkpoints they now live and operate together for the first time since the war began.

Guarding checkpoints — a task the American military never relishes — invites attacks by insurgents, who remain particularly active in northern Iraq. On three consecutive nights recently, rockets or mortars landed near three checkpoints in Diyala Province, though they caused no casualties, according to an American military spokesman and an Iraqi military official. “You stay static,” said First Sgt. Tony DelSardo of the Army’s Third Infantry Division, “you’ll get hit.”

The operation began this month after labored negotiations with Iraq’s Arab and Kurdish leaders. The immediate goal is to bolster security ahead of bitterly contested elections in March along an ethnic patchwork of lands devastated by attacks.

The ultimate strategy is to defuse political tensions along a fault line that could easily rupture, sundering the country once American forces leave, or even before. The operation underscores the extent to which the American military remains an arbiter of Iraq’s most intractable conflicts.

“What we’re doing is forcing the wound to close,” Lt. Col. Christopher L. Connelly, a battalion commander with the First Armored Division, said at a checkpoint being erected on the highway that links Mosul to Erbil, the Kurdish region’s capital.

With time running out before President Obama’s deadline for withdrawing combat troops in August, the mission has become the most urgent in Iraq.

The American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, proposed the checkpoints, along with joint patrols involving the three sides, after a series of incidents last year threatened open conflict between Iraqi and Kurdish forces. Its inception stalled for months amid deeply rooted suspicions between Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the Kurdish president, Massoud Barzani.

“What we have sought to do is separate the politics from the security piece, and of course, that’s very hard to do,” said Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., the deputy commander in Iraq. “But we keep bringing it back to focusing on: O.K., where and how do we provide the best security to the Iraqi people? And how does that create the environment that will someday allow for political process to take place?”

This northern front, or “trigger line,” dates from the American invasion in 2003. As Saddam Hussein’s army collapsed, Kurdish forces called the pesh merga pushed from their three provinces in the north and occupied sections of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala Provinces that the Kurds had historically claimed.

Photo

American soldiers trained Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers in traumatic first aide techniques, force protection, and fire arms safety in preparation for working at checkpoints.Credit
Eros Hoagland for The New York Times

They have controlled the areas ever since, despite calls by Iraq’s government and regional Sunni leaders for them to withdraw to the “green line” that established the internal Kurdish boundary before 2003.

As Iraq’s new security forces have grown more assertive in controlling territory on the southern side, the effect has been to square off two suspicious forces along a seam that has been exploited by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other insurgents for attacks, and by politicians for political points.

Last May, the pesh merga prevented Nineveh’s newly elected governor of Nineveh, a Sunni, from crossing the line to drive to Bashiqa, a town nominally under his authority. The facts of the incident were disputed, but all agreed that violence was only narrowly averted.

Since then, a series of hair-trigger confrontations has raised tensions. So have bombings in villages that were aimed at small ethnic communities along the line populated by Assyrian Christians, Turkmens and Shabaks. Insurgents struck with such precision between the two opposing authorities that American and Iraqi officials suspect the attacks were an effort to provoke an Arab-Kurd war.

Political leaders in Diyala, Kirkuk and Nineveh have condemned the new operation, seeing the checkpoints as de facto recognition of Kurdish territorial claims. While many Kurds serve in the Iraqi Army, the pesh merga operate under the command of the Kurdish government; their presence, and that of the Kurdish intelligence service, are viewed by many Iraqis as illegitimate.

“What guarantees are there that the pesh merga will ever withdraw?” Qusay Abbas, a member of Nineveh’s regional legislature, which has opposed the operation, said at his home near one of the new checkpoints. Last week, he said, Kurdish soldiers detained and threatened him when he tried to visit a mosque in a neighboring village.

American commanders have emphasized that the checkpoints are not meant to preclude negotiations between Arabs and Kurds over the final internal boundaries of the Kurdish region, though the hope is that cooperation on the ground will give momentum to a political — and peaceful — resolution of the underlying dispute.

The duration of the operations remains unclear. Ultimately the Americans hope to withdraw. For now, American platoons hunker down with their Iraqi and Kurdish counterparts in primitive camps beside the checkpoints. Joint patrols have begun to ensure security in the immediate area. More expansive patrols remain the subject of negotiations.

At one checkpoint on the road to Bashiqa, near where the governor was stopped, there is a small sign of progress. Until last week, the Arabs and the Kurds maintained separate checkpoints.

Now platoons from both forces, along with the Americans, have consolidated into a single base, flying the Iraqi and Kurdish flags. They still maintain separate command posts, but the American platoon leader, Lt. Cody R. Schuette, is trying to find a tent or trailer to serve as a single one.

Meanwhile, at Forward Operating Base Marez, on the edge of Mosul, the Americans have been conducting four-day courses for the new platoons. The program forces Iraqi and pesh merga troops together in courses, in temporary barracks and in the chow line.

Staff Col. Avdo Fathi, deputy commander of Iraq’s Third Army Division, said training and operating together would “break a lot of the emotional obstacles” between the Arabs and Kurds. “I don’t want to talk about politics,” he said. “We are soldiers. The security forces — the army and the pesh merga — represent one country.”

John Leland contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Sam Dagher from Erbil.

A version of this article appears in print on January 27, 2010, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Rivalries In Iraq Keep G.I.’s In the Field. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe